Articles manufactured by series production, particularly packaged articles such as bagged candy, bagged ice cubes, and the like, are often dispensed into a storage compartment. Machines for making ice and delivering bags with loose ice cubes may be deployed in supermarkets. Such machines are designed with a top part with an ice cube machine and a central packing machine packing the ice cubes loosely in bags, and a lower part with a storage compartment from where the filled ice cube bags are supplied as the customer opens an access door to the storage compartment, providing himself with a desired number of ice cube bags. Examples of such machines are described in the applicant's patent applications WO 2008/089762 and US Pat. App. Pub. No. 2010/0024363.
One problem with such machines is that the bags fall down into the storage compartment over the same position. Over time, a stack of bags forms a pyramid. This causes the storage compartment to be badly utilized as it can only be partially filled, resulting in low capacity for a storage compartment of a given size. The pyramid of stacked bags rapidly reaches the top of the compartment, so now bags cannot be added until some are removed for purchase.
Due to the lower capacity of the storage compartment, the ice cube machine is dimensioned with a relatively high capacity in order to cope with peak loads. These may occur, for example, in connection with festivals or other events, or when the outdoor temperature rises suddenly because of change in weather.
The problem has hitherto been solved by the staff in the supermarket performing a manual leveling of the ice cube bags in the storage compartment at short intervals. This manual leveling is a problem due to work safety considerations that limit the time in which the employees are allowed to work with frozen products, and a desire to release the employees' resources for other purposes in the supermarket.
The machine will also find application in connection with distribution of serially produced articles in a storage compartment where distribution of the articles in an even layer is wanted.